Blogging for a Living

Over the past two years, I have somehow found the time required to be more productive. While I have been blogging since 2006, this past 20 months, since founding FohBoh, I have been a very active blogger and social media practitioner. Now, with my frequent posts on FohBoh, bi-weekly posts for the FohBoh newsletter, "In the Window", my new Social Media Kitchen blog, this new Restaurant Social Media blog and my forthcoming monthly column for the California Restaurant Association "The Standard", I am now fully engaged. Lately, more speaking engagements, moderating and participating on panels discussing my passions, social media, online communities, technology, and foodservice social media.

So, where do I find the time to actually run my business? How can I be creative, continue my research, read, raising capital, create and sell new products and still have a balanced life? I think I just work, alot.

I find what takes the most time is messaging. Crafting messages. Revisiting the last message, learning new messages and trying not to live in PowerPoint. FohBoh is a small company with just a few employees. We are NOT venture-backed, so resources are skinny. We do have a few shareholders and a couple of note holders. But, most of the capital is from my wallet. Deferred luxuries include things like like a paycheck. This is skin-in-the-game and dedication.

Blogging has become our SEO strategy and we have learned to be patient and optimistic, however. Testing and evaluating new technologies has also become a big part of our daily routine because we need to accelerate user adoption, FohBoh member activity. So, adding to our daily activity is Twitter, Digg, Friendfeed, Facebook, and dozens of foodservice and other blogs. Writing now consumes 4 hours a day, seven days a week.

I had a foolish thought recently. Maybe I should write a book?

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reBlog from fohboh.com: Testing Zemanta to enhance your blogs - FohBoh

I found this fascinating quote today:

This is a test blog using Zemanta. I downloaded the Firefox plug in to see how it works for me on FohBoh. The test topic is cheeseburger, seems appropriate, since this is the most popular food served in restaurants. So, Zemanta popped up on my right side and I added "Cheeseburger" in the search box as my topic. Up pops relevant photos and articles that have been posted using Zemanta.fohboh.com, Testing Zemanta to enhance your blogs - FohBoh, May 2008

You should read the whole article.